Satomi Ton/Trivia
*His real name is Yamanouchi Hideo. He was born to Arishima family as fourth son out of five (overall sixth of seven siblings), but he got different surname early on. His mother’s side of family, the Yamanouchi family, was in dire need of new heir due to his mother’s brother’s death a few days before his birth. He was officially registered to Yamanouchi family on November 1st, 1888. **His pen-name Satomi Ton was randomly picked up from a telephone directory. *At the age of 8, he contracted pneumonia and he was on verge of death. To everyone’s surprise he recovered, but the doctor said his growth would be affected. He ended up being way shorter than his brothers and was often sick, but lived a long life despite this. *When he was young, he met Shiga Naoya through his older brother Ikuma who was friends and classmates with him. Ton admired Shiga, as the older male was tall and athletic, good at many things. They eventually became good friends, almost like brothers. *Shiga gave him nickname “Igo”, which was popular among some Shirakaba members. *Together with Shiga, they were frequent brothel visitors. Even when he got married, he had hard times to get rid of his old habit. Just like Shiga, both seemed to need “a thrill” to keep them motivated to write. *At the age of 12, he found Izumi Kyouka’s works and was right away taken by his literary style. In 1910 Kyouka moved to his neighborhood and the following year his works gained the older author’s attention and praise. In 1912 the two met finally, leading him to become his disciple later time. Kyouka was the only one of his all mentors who he ever accepted as his “sensei”. *His literary style has hints of Kyouka’s influence with some “ghostly” elements, but mostly he’s known for his way of being “sincere” and telling how things are, many works portraying men not ashamed of their lifestyle (which some of them were based on himself). *The vast amount of autobiographical works also caused him problems, most of the clashing happening with Shiga, who he wrote a lot about in his works. One notable case took place in 1913 when Ton started serializing “You and Me” (kimi to watakushi). Shiga wasn’t too happy how a character modeled after him had quoted him in the said work. He admitted that meanwhile he indeed had said such words, he didn’t find them appropriate for the public. This eventually lead their friendship to getting strained, and Shiga’s near-death accident in August the same year made things worse when Shiga left to recuperate elsewhere and Ton’s manuscript for the said work went missing, him suspecting Shiga. **He had been there when the accident took place and according to him, he had been holding bloody Shiga in his arms, screaming for help. When the situation calmed down, he had wished that the guy actually died but so didn’t happen. This behavior might be explained by the fact how they had been fighting a lot and how dependent he had been on Shiga since childhood, to the extent he couldn’t help but want to die because he could never be independent at that rate or Shiga should have died instead. **The two fought many times over small things through their life, but always made up fast. Eventually they had a break, but came to be friends again until their deaths. *According to his own words, he was a troublemaker and caused troubles to the family when he announced wanting to marry a geisha named Masa. Family wasn’t too happy about it, but eventually they gave up and let him do what he wanted to do. **He also used to spend notable amount of Yamanouchi family’s money for his own entertainment, which also didn’t please his parents. *He wasn’t particularly close with his brother Takeo due to their age difference and the fact how differently they were raised. Their personalities also were so different that in his notable work “The Anjou Brothers” (Anjou-ke no Kyoudai), that revolves around Takeo’s suicide case and his own women troubles at the time, he bashed the older man for being “too dramatic” and claiming he didn’t know anything about women (which probably refers to the fact how Takeo was sort of a feminist). **In 1922 he met a young woman called Oryou, who ended up as his mistress (told about in The Anjou Brothers and few other works how it affected his married life with his wife Masa). Their relationship lasted until 1952, when she died of uterine cancer. *Through Kyouka he met Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and Kume Masao and later time became good friends with the latter one. *Together with Yoshii Isamu and Kume, they worked on magazine “Human” (Ningen), often spending time drinking together. Their reputation was quite questionable. **In 1933 he got arrested with Kume for gambling with hanafuda cards, which was illegal at the time (and still is). *Late 1982 onwards he started to have heart troubles. In January 5th the next year he caught high fever, which was in fact pneumonia. Few days later he had to get hospitalised due to his condition worsening and he told his son that his time had come. 20th he was in near comatose state and the following day on 21st when he seemed to be all fine, heart troubles hit him again and he was pronounced dead after two hours of trying to save him. He was 94 years old.